Warmth
by DragonFang2016
Summary: Warmth was what he felt from his father's hand. It brought back distant memories of walks in the park, a vow of love, and a funeral full of sunshine. Graduation not only marks the end of a chapter in Asano's life, but also the beginning of a new one. (Oneshot)


DISCLAIMER: I do not own Assassination Classroom.

* * *

 **Warmth**

* * *

He was the first one to be called up to the stage—Class A was always first when it came to ceremonies, and alphabetically, his name was always on top of the roster. Nevertheless, it was still a surprise when he heard his father say his name.

"Gakushuu Asano."

Not because he hadn't been expecting it, but because it had simply been too long since he'd last heard his father say his first name. It sounded alien, coming from his mouth.

Asano walked across the stage, the sound of his footsteps on the wooden flooring nearly inaudible, inundated by the applause from the crowd seated below him.

When he reached the podium behind which his father stood—behind which he would hand out diplomas for the last time, as Kunugigaoka's chairman—Asano took his diploma with both hands and dipped his head to bow, only to be stopped when his father extended a hand towards him. His first display of favoritism. It wasn't a gesture that was customary to the school's junior high graduation ceremony, but then again, when was the last time they actually had physical contact, aside from when the man had hit him across a room?

Asano grasped the hand offered to him. It was smooth—slender fingers and immaculately clean, well-trimmed nails. It was so familiar, yet so foreign.

It was warm.

* * *

Warmth was associated with the Before.

It was exaggerated stories exchanged over hot milk with vanilla, and foot fights under the kotatsu. He remembered that one instance when his toe accidentally touched the heater, and he cried from the pain. His mother—he couldn't remember her face, only that she had the most lovely light green eyes, flawless skin, and hair like spun gold (she was a princess)—had pressed some ice on it while she scolded his father in her broken Japanese for being "an irresponsible, childish _idiot_." It was so funny how for once, _he_ was the one on the receiving end of a lecture, that Gakushuu had started giggling.

It was the first few sunny weekends after winter, when he would literally drag his father out of bed when it was almost lunchtime—that man could sleep well into the afternoon if left alone—and beg to be taken to the park, because Mom was at work early and he had so much energy that he was going to explode. Dad would groan into his pillow and say that stupidly cliché "five more minutes" until Gakushuu jumped onto the bed next to him and threatened to call Mom. He had already learned how to use the phone (Mom was on speed dial 1), which was no small feat for a two-year-old.

That always woke Dad up. Mom could be very scary if she wanted to be.

Whenever his father was feeling especially lazy, Gakushuu would take a marker from his art box, climb onto the bed, and play connect-the-dots with his dad's freckles—they usually came out in the summer, when it was sunny (Dad once gave him a boring explanation using lots of weird words like "melon-in"), but if he squinted and looked real close, he could see them even when there was no sun out, on his face and his shoulders. Maybe it was because Dad was a sun all on his own. Dad hated his freckles, but Gakushuu liked them a lot. Connect-the-dots was the funnest game ever.

"I'd be hotter without them," he'd heard his father say to Mom once, and she had replied with "Oh, shut up. You're plenty hot already."

Gakushuu agreed with Mom. The things Dad said usually made sense, but this didn't. Why would Dad want to be hotter? It was summer. It was already too hot.

Maybe he was joking.

Gakushuu wished that he had inherited his father's freckles. Then he could play connect-the-dots with himself in the mirror. That seemed fun. But since he got his clear skin from his mother, he had to settle for drawing on Dad's, instead. Dad didn't usually get mad at him for drawing on his face, except for that time the marker he had used turned out to be a permanent one. He had thought that he would get into a lot of trouble for that, but all Mom had done was laugh, and after that, all of the permanent markers in the house were put on a really high shelf.

In the park, he would swing the hand that grasped his father's, listening to him hum a song he'd never heard before. Dad's hand was way bigger than his, and much warmer. It was always warm. At least, compared to Mom's, it was. She was anemic, which sounded really cool until Gakushuu found out what it actually meant.

But that was okay, Mom had said. It only meant that she didn't have enough red blood cells. She could fix that by eating lots of steak, which was great, because steak was one of her favorite foods.

Mom was a vampire, he concluded. She was a vampire princess.

Dad laughed and corrected him: "She's Irish."

"I like my theory better."

"Theory" was a word he had recently learned from Dad. He liked how it sounded, and judging from that happy sound that Dad made, he knew that he had used it right. Dad was always teaching him new words—he said that he was a quick learner, which made Gakushuu feel smart.

"Me too, buddy," his father replied. "I like your theory better, too."

Gakushuu swung their hands.

 _One, two. One, two._

"Hey, Dad, do you love me?"

 _Back and forth. Back and forth._

"Of course I do, Shuu." Dad looked down at him. "Wanna know how much I love you?"

"Yes!" Gakushuu yelled excitedly, jumping up and down. He knew what was coming next.

"I love you thiiiiiiiiss much!"

Then, with a smile that could outshine the sun, Dad lifted him up into the air until he could almost touch the clouds. Gakushuu felt like he was flying whenever Dad did that, because Dad was a giant. He was six meters tall, he said, or was that six feet? But feet didn't make any sense at all. Maybe it was a Haravardo thing—his parents were always talking about that, but Gakushuu didn't care, because it sounded boring. And if Gakushuu drank a lot of milk and played outside every day, he would be a giant, too, someday.

Just like his dad.

* * *

When the Before ended, his world began to crumble, and Warmth was but a distant memory.

Dad was his Sun, and Mom was his Moon.

That was how it worked.

That was how it was supposed to be.

But now, his Sun no longer smiled. Instead, he walked around the house like a lost robot, as if someone had scooped out the light out of him and forgotten to give it back. He wouldn't respond to Gakushuu's cries and tugs, and whenever he did, it was to tell him to stop and to leave him alone. Whenever Gakushuu came to get him out of bed on weekends, he was long gone. One day, he came back all bloody and bruised, like he had gotten into a fight, and he and Mom got into an argument about it. It was in English, and they were talking so fast and so loudly that he didn't bother to try to understand, only that Mom was yelling too much and Dad was so calm it was scary and he wanted it to stop and he wanted things to go back to how they were in the Before.

"Is Dad broken?" he asked Mom that night.

Gakushuu hoped with all his heart that that wasn't the case, but it made sense. Dad wasn't acting like himself. It was like someone else, someone sinister, like a demon or a vengeful ghost, had taken up residence in his body, like in the movies. Gakushuu was beginning to miss his smile, his laugh, his hugs. It felt like forever since they last took a walk in that park—forever since his father carried him. He wanted to ask him if he still loved him, but he was too scared to. But he probably didn't even need to ask—of course his father still loved him. Why wouldn't he? Broken or not, Dad was still Dad, right?

Right?

"No, Shuu, of course he's not broken," Mom said to him in English. "He's just not feeling well. He'll get better in no time. So don't worry about it, kiddo."

She ruffled his hair, and Gakushuu couldn't help but want to cry. Whenever Mom spoke in English, it meant that she was really upset.

Dad _was_ broken. He needed fixing.

But Mom would never lie to Gakushuu, so he decided to trust her.

"Okay." She looked so sad. Mom wasn't supposed to be sad. She was supposed to be cheerful and lively and a bit short-tempered and scary. She was supposed to sit back in her art studio and draw and paint beautiful pictures and make a place for Gakushuu to sit on her lap whenever he was scared or cold or lonely. Now, he would find her in the guest bedroom, her eyes puffy from crying and her sketchbooks filled with ugly smudges and blobs and thick lines.

He clambered up next to her.

"It's okay, Mommy," he said in the best English he could manage.

She smiled. "I know."

Why was she crying?

* * *

 _Beep. Beep._

He remembered waking up in a hospital bed at age three. It was cold everywhere, but his hand was warm. Because his father was holding onto him like a lifeline, face buried in the white sheets as his thumb rubbed circles on the back of his son's hand. For a fleeting moment, Gakushuu wondered if he was dreaming—he hadn't felt the warmth of his father's hand in _ages_. But the dull pain in his head told him otherwise.

 _Beep. Beep._

He remembered that he had been in the backseat of the car, singing a song with his mother at the wheel. Then there had been a loud screech of rubber tires fighting against slick asphalt, and a crash that had almost smashed his brain against the inside of his skull. Everything had disappeared. He had gone to sleep.

"Where's Mommy?"

Too many _beeps_ passed. Gakushuu's head hurt too much to bother to count them.

His father looked up, his expression blank. Gakushuu wished that he had never said anything, because as soon as he noticed that he was awake, Dad let go of his hand, leaving it for the cold to devour. He made a fist, hoping to salvage some of the warmth in his palm, where his father's hand had been just seconds before.

A fruitless effort. He was literally grabbing at nothing.

Maybe if he had stayed quiet, Dad wouldn't have let go.

"She's dead," Dad said.

Dead. Gakushuu felt his stomach twist itself into knots, as if it were made of shoelaces. He was no stranger to the word. His parents hated to sugarcoat things for him. Dead meant that he was never going to see Mom again. Dead meant that she was gone forever. Dead meant that it was just him and Dad now, and Mom had lied to him, because Dad was still broken and there was no one left to help Gakushuu fix him. Gakushuu wished that his father would smile a little, and tell him that it would be alright. That even though Mom was gone, _he_ was still here and life would go on, even if it was only the two of them. That they could still be happy as long as they were together.

"We'll be okay, right, Dad?"

 _Beep. Beep. Beep._

He received no answer, which made him cry. Dad tried to stop him, because he was acting weak, but he didn't care.

He didn't care about acting weak.

His mother was dead, and Dad wasn't even upset.

The only source of warmth that Gakushuu could trust at the moment… the only one he could feel at the moment… was that of the thin hospital blanket covering his bruised legs. And that of the tears streaking down his face.

* * *

There was hardly a cloud in the sky on that day they buried Mom.

For any other event, the day would have been perfect.

He remembered being angry at the world. Angry at the universe. His mother was dead. So why? Why was the sun still shining? Why was the sky still so blue? Why was everything beautiful still so… _beautiful_?

Why did Dad look like he didn't care?

Grandma was crying. She had flown across a country and an ocean, from Boston to Tokyo, just to see her daughter's lifeless body lowered into the ground. Grandma was a wonderful, beautiful woman. Mom had her peridot-green eyes, her spun-gold hair. She didn't deserve to be in such pain. Gakushuu held her hand. It was warm.

He tried to hold Dad's hand, as well.

But Dad didn't want him to.

The world felt so much colder after that.

* * *

His memories from the Before were a bit fuzzy, but he remembered more than he would care to admit. Sometimes, they were snippets. Staticky and blurred and soundless, covered in a pale, spotted haze like he was watching them play on an old, broken television that was struggling to keep itself going. Other times, they were so vivid and detailed that it felt like some deity with a sick sense of humor was thrusting him back into the past and telling him to relive his life, to relive every misery that came with it.

Every person was faceless. He could only remember at least one feature that made them stand out—for his mother, it was her eyes.

For his father, it was his smile.

His father had beautiful eyes, too, of course—they were a pale, silvery violet that his younger self had called "pretty" on occasion because they reminded him of stars—but Asano had long since grown tired of looking at them, of seeing them filled with disappointment, apathy, and instability. Of seeing them glow red with malice. Of seeing what a mere glance and a few spoken words can do to people who defied him.

He had grown tired of seeing them in the mirror every day.

"Congratulations on graduating, Asano-kun."

He could feel his arm moving up and down, but all Asano could see was his father's smile.

It was not as radiant as it used to be.

However, it was better than the sinister, robotic expression Asano grew up knowing. Better than the one he had taken for himself. It was genuine. He could count the number of times he'd seen his father smile like that, after the Before, on one hand. Something had happened to change him. He was making an effort to reconnect with his son, although if Asano asked him that directly, he was sure that the man would deny it. They may not have a normal relationship. They may not be close, but they were starting to be, and that was what mattered.

There were so few memories that could make him feel anything other than indifference. Asano hated dwelling in the past—it was a childish concept. The future was far more important than what happened some twelve years ago, during a time when life was simple and he didn't understand anything. Things had turned out for the better. He was strong now, and his father was strong, and that was a good thing. Strength promised survival. It always did.

But there were times when he remembered just how much of a comfort the warmth of his father's hand could be. Those memories, he kept locked in a box close to his heart, like a precious, hidden treasure, no matter how clear or how faint they were. Memories from the Before. And now, here was a new memory. One that was definitely worthy of remembrance.

So he held on for just a bit longer.

* * *

This is my own take on Asano's past. I know that some people can remember things from when they were two, so I trusted that, and voila! This oneshot was born! I know it's cheesy, but after yesterday's episode, I could use some cheesy. Can't believe the anime's ended! [insert ugly sobbing here]

It got so depressing. Even I didn't expect this. I'm not really happy with the endgame because I wanted it to feel a bit... detached. But the childlike dialogue in the middle made it seem more personal. It kind of stabbed me in the feels and I didn't have the heart to revise it, so I just published it. I can really relate to what happened to Asano's and the Chairman's relationship, which is probably why I like them so much (a lot more than the main cast, as you can see). They used to be close, but then something happened that put a lot of distance between them, and now they're reconnecting.

I like happy endings, even if they're kind of bittersweet.


End file.
